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Post by I Love Melvin on May 8, 2024 12:03:16 GMT
Re: Courage Every Day, you did a really good job of considering all the angles before you reached our conclusions, Fading Fast. Having read your comments I won't seek it out myself, but it speaks to your curiosity and intelligence that you were attracted to it in the first place. Well done, as usual.
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Post by Fading Fast on May 10, 2024 9:46:50 GMT
The Prince and the Showgirl from 1957 with Marilyn Monroe, Laurence Olivier, Richard Wattis and Sybil Thorndike
Despite strong rumors that leads Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier did not get along at all during the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl and further rumors that Monroe was difficult in general, none of that shows in the end result.
Be it Olivier's directing, he performed double duty here, and/or Monroe's ability to turn it on when it counts, the movie is charming with Monroe regularly stealing scenes. Just ignore the gossip and enjoy this funny and entertaining, albeit a bit too long movie.
It is 1911 during the coronation week of Britain's King George V. Olivier plays a visiting prince regent from a small but tactically important country in the Balkans, so the British assign a senior civil servant, played by Richard Wattis, to tend to the prince regent's "needs."
Olivier, a widower, likes tarty women, so he asks an American chorus girl, played by Marilyn Monroe, whom he sees in a popular dancehall show over for a "late night supper." Instead of a "soft dollar" arrangement, Olivier should have just gone for a real prostitute.
Monroe's character, combining innocence with an almost guileless intelligence, slowly sees that she's not there to be a dinner companion, but to be the post-dinner "entertainment." She bumbles and strategizes her way out of the mess.
The fun here is all Monroe. She manages to be a cute girl in awe of the royals one minute and aware that they put their pants on one leg at a time the next. She uses her naivety to get away with behavior that would offend if done by others.
She also proves a quick study, who sees that much of the pompous royal codes of conduct are just a facade to let the royals do things for their benefit. She throws a sharp elbow Wattis' way too by implicitly calling him a pimp for bringing her to Olivier for "supper:"
"You know, there's a word for what you are and it's not Deputy Head of the Far Eastern Department."
Monroe also charms Olivier's former mother-in-law, the queen dowager, played by Sybil Thorndike, as well as Olivier's teenage son, who will soon become king.
It's the old saw about a regular person innocently telling the royals truths they never hear, yet instead of getting angry, the royals find the honesty refreshing. Only blonde "dopey" Monroe could get away with telling the king of a Balkan country this humdinger:
"Besides, who cares about your old Balkan revolutions, anyway? You have them all the time."
That innocent honesty bumping up against royal pomposity is The Prince and the Showgirl's one note, and it gets played a bit too much. Still, Monroe is so charming as the babe in the woods that it works.
Olivier is a bit two-dimensional here as the imperious royal. He is a great actor, but he needed to make his character more human and show some sincere loneliness so that we'd better understand why he likes Monroe's character despite finding her irritating.
Wittis is outstanding as the unflappable British civil servant who plays straitman to Monroe's unwitting improprieties. He's always professional, but still lets you know he enjoys seeing Monroe function as a spanner in the royals' usually well-orchestrated machinery.
This is a lighthearted effort with Monroe fully playing to her personal brand of innocent-yet-knowing sex goddess/gold-digger who really is a sweet person with a kind heart. It's a contradictory mix, but Monroe played a version of it in almost every one of her movies.
A good half hour could have been edited out of the movie's nearly two-hour runtime, with the plotline about Olivier's son planning a quasi rebellion being completely left on the cutting-room floor.
The Prince and the Showgirl is Monroe's movie. We all know of her off-screen struggles, but on screen, she shines. Yes, she is pretty and voluptuous, but she is also a talented comedic actress whose timing and facial expressions reveal tremendous skill.
Monroe also has "it." It is an aura of sex and it is a magic that happens between her and the camera. It's a shame her personal demons led to her early passing, as movies like The Prince and the Showgirl argue she would have had a long career.
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Post by Fading Fast on May 12, 2024 9:59:34 GMT
Until They Sail from 1957 with Joan Fontaine, Jean Simmons, Piper Laurie, Paul Newman and Sandra Dee
Until They Sail is a small gem of a movie with an impressive cast, beautiful MGM production qualities - including gorgeous black and white cinematography - and skilled director Robert Wise at the tiller. Yet, somehow, this one flies below the radar.
Perhaps because it's a wartime homefront movie focused on four sisters, it's often dismissed as a "woman's picture." That is silly, though, as this WWII drama, set in New Zealand, is an outstanding movie with characters you'll come to care very much about.
Four sisters - played by Joan Fontaine, Jean Simmons, Piper Laurie and Sandra Dee - ranging in age from fifteen for Dee to early thirties for (and older in real life) Fontaine - live in a pretty bungalow house in New Zealand. The girl's parents have already passed away.
Their small town of Christchurch has been depopulated of young men as the men have gone off to the deserts of Africa to fight the Germans. So now, with the Japanese sweeping south toward New Zealand, the women are happy to hear "the Americans are coming."
Until They Sail makes it clear that the young women of Christchurch have passionately missed their men in a very carnal way. Kudos to James A. Michener, the author of the story the movie is based on, for conveying this earthy reality that was often elided in movies then.
What follows is an "invasion" of sorts as reams of young, strong, virile American soldiers and sailors stream into Christchurch with plenty of money, goods, bravado and testosterone. The four sisters are not immune to the lure of American masculinity.
All the sisters have their own experiences, with Laurie being the wild child who ditches her incautious marriage to a New Zealand boy, now off fighting, for the comfort of a warm bed with numerous (!) Americans.
The oldest sister, Fontaine, who was on a glidepath to spinsterhood, has a passionate affair with an American officer. He, though, leaves for Guadalcanal before their marriage license is approved, but not before 'icy" Fontaine becomes pregnant.
Sandra Dee, making her film debut, thankfully plays down the typical "Sandra Dee" persona as the youngest sister. She is initiated to flirting, dating and boys in general earlier than her sisters as will happen in a small town awash in young men and pheromones.
Simmons, the nicest and most practical, but also the most sincerely romantic of the sisters, meets a handsome, aloof, alcoholic young American officer, played by Paul Newman. Their affair - both resist it for personal reasons - is the most complex and engaging one of all.
Director Wise skillfully weaves all of these stories together with the larger narrative of a small New Zealand town overrun, for better or worse, with Americans. This is no Hallmark picture as real life and all its ramifications buffet the sisters time and again.
Wise's picture and Michener's writing, with several scenes shot in New Zealand, create a genuine homefront atmosphere with a surprisingly frank and thoughtful approach to the moral challenges a heretofore insular community faces when the Americans blast in.
The sisters, like real siblings, fight, makeup, fight again, and go on living. They love and understand, yet also irritate and, at times, alienate each other. None of them are perfect, which this talented cast uses to make the family seem genuine.
There is a dramatic narrative arc to Laurie's story that frames the movie, but that is less important than seeing the change and growth in the girls and the town. War truly reshuffles the deck.
Enough can't be said about the cast. Laurie's performance is almost chilling as a young woman who has no intention of letting conventions get in her way. Her indomitable will blasts past moral hurdles in a not always flattering, but quite believable way.
Fontaine, a acting pro through and through, wonderfully captures a woman who comes to find love and passion in life right when she thought it was going to pass her by. Her conversion and the humility it entails is moving and uplifting.
If there is a star in this ensemble cast, though, it is Simmons as she manages to play mother to her sisters, but never loses her kindness or romantic faith, even when Newman - who is outstanding here - tests her belief in love and commitment.
To use the derogatory expression "a woman's picture" to describe Until They Sail is ridiculous unless one believes exploring the sexual desires and emotional needs of four lonely women in wartime is somehow an uninteresting-to-men part of human nature.
Until They Sail deserves a bigger audience today. Unfortunately, its view that men and women want to be together militates against the modern view where an honorable push for equality got warped into a stoic independence that often denies human nature.
For those not devoted to that pitched battle, Until They Sail is an outstanding and overlooked exploration of a unique homefront experience when a town is depopulated of its young men and later repopulated with young men from an allied country.
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Post by I Love Melvin on May 12, 2024 12:36:33 GMT
Until They Sail deserves a bigger audience today. Unfortunately, its view that men and women want to be together militates against the modern view where an honorable push for equality got warped into a stoic independence that often denies human nature.
I don't think I've ever heard it expressed so well. And re: The Prince and the Showgirl, I liked your assessment of Marilyn in a role she's often slighted for. There's a story I've heard repeated a few times to the effect that when Dame Sybil Thorndike saw the rushes she knew instantly that Marilyn had the goods for acting on camera and that they all could learn from her.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on May 13, 2024 19:40:21 GMT
I was just watching Have Gun Will Travel. The local farmers didn't welcome and were thus mean to foreigners, that were also farmers, who came from southern eastern Europe. Well, these local farmers wheat crops were dying due to disease. The two end up getting along, and the show ends with Paladin telling the local farmers that these foreigner's wheat crops didn't suffer the same disease to their crops because they used seeds from their homeland, Crimea. The foreigners decide to give the local farmers free seed as a way to make them part of this American community.
Thus, Ukrainians helping out Americans in the old west!
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Post by Fading Fast on May 18, 2024 11:13:29 GMT
Il Posto from 1961 from Italy
Il Posto is the tale of a seventeen-year-old boy starting his adult life as a clerk in a large post-war Italian corporation. He is all but force marched there by his poor parents, but the bustling city and a pretty young girl he quickly meets provide a ray of hope.
Domenico is the boy - a skinny, shy teenager - who meets a cute girl, Antonietta, the day they both take the company's aptitude tests. They don't really flirt, as neither seems to understand flirting, so they just spend some of the day's downtime together.
Director Ermanno Olmi knows how to capture life's small details. His approach is almost documentary-like as he examines Domenico's days. From Domenico's family's shabby apartment to his awkwardness with Antonietta, it's the opposite of Hollywood glamor.
Domenico and Antonietta are both hired, but in different departments, in different buildings. Domenico's first job is as a messenger boy, which he's told is just temporary until a clerk position opens up.
He spends his boring workday doing very little other than trying to find a way to "run into" Antonietta. He's every teenage boy who doesn't yet care about work, but very much cares about girls. He is, though, very shy about all of it.
The glimpses we get of Antonietta show her fitting in better as she already has a group of young friends. Fair or not, pretty girls often have it easier socially. Seeing, at a distance, Antonietta seemingly happy in the company only makes Domenico feel lonelier.
There is a small story arc - Domenico eventually gets moved to his "permanent" job as a clerk - but Olmi's movie is more about its commentary on life for those working in a large impersonal company.
Olmi provides brief glimpses into the lives of the older clerks whose days are monotonous, salaries small and life away from work, often depressing. One older clerk lives in a rundown boarding house where he writes a novel at night that will never be published.
The "climax," no spoilers coming, is the saddest ever company New Years Eve party for, clearly, the "lower level" employees. It's held in a drab "social club" with a third-rate band providing tacky and dated entertainment.
Told from the perspective director Olmi chooses, Il Posto shows the dehumanizing effects that working as a faceless drone in a large organization can have on, in particular, unassuming people with modest talents.
It's true, but it's not the full story. Did Italy have a better option after WWII? Its economic growth and return to developed-country status was impressive in the post-war decades. Did having large well-run but impersonal corporations contribute to that growth?
Also free people own their own lives. Could Domenico take night courses to advance in the company or move to another one? While his clerical position is described as "a job for life," is he truly "trapped?" Not everyone who works for a large company is unhappy.
Shot in black and white, Il Posto impressively captures a moment in one boy's life in post-war Italy as he faces a possible future of soul-crushing monotony. Still, it's only one side of the complex political, social and economic story of post-war Italy.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on May 18, 2024 15:21:46 GMT
I watched Il Posto years ago with my Italian father-in-law and wife. My father-in-law was a big fan of the film having to grow up in post WWII Italy (Bari). I like the film. While that party is a sad event it does reflect a certain attitude that was happening in the country at that time.
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Post by NoShear on May 19, 2024 1:24:36 GMT
I was just watching Have Gun Will Travel. The local farmers didn't welcome and were thus mean to foreigners, that were also farmers, who came from southern eastern Europe. Well, these local farmers wheat crops were dying due to disease. The two end up getting along, and the show ends with Paladin telling the local farmers that these foreigner's wheat crops didn't suffer the same disease to their crops because they used seeds from their homeland, Crimea. The foreigners decide to give the local farmers free seed as a way to make them part of this American community. Thus, Ukrainians helping out Americans in the old west! jamesjazzguitar, thank you for your post(s) on the HAVE GUN - WILL TRAVEL episode: I recently dropped the episode in a discussion of Ukrainian wheat, so I appreciate being reminded of the episode.
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Post by kims on May 20, 2024 18:16:09 GMT
LAND OF THE PHARAOHS. Not originally a money maker, Scorsese points out what made it a cult classic for some, including me. For me Joan Collins especially makes the movie-impudent, sultry, scheming and carries off the change to whimpering at her eminent death. This film could have been the screen test for her tv role as Alexis.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on May 21, 2024 23:18:47 GMT
I just watched Cheyenne, episode Fury at Rio Hondo. This was a remake of Hawks\Bogie's To Have and Have Not. Most of the dialog, as well as associated action, was scene-for-scene \ word-for-word. There was the two women (Bacall and Moran), as well as the sidekick (Brennan).
The setting was the Mexico revolution against the French. Thus, opposite of the movie, the French were the bad guys. The Mexicans are trying to smuggle guns from the USA to help the cause, and Cheyenne gets trapped in the middle. He starts out as not wanting to be involved in their politics (just like Bogie) but ends up saving the day. The Bacall replacement is a singer and sings a song and the Moran replacement is the wife of the main Mexican revolutionary. There is also a piano player just like Cricket (Carmichael).
What really got me was the word-for-word dialog, even the funny and sarcastic Bogie lines. E.g. when the lead Mexican guy, who is with his wife, just like the movie, is shot, Cheyenne says "don't get blood on the cushion of the stagecoach". (just like Bogie says but about his boat!).
The ending is the same, with Cheyenne getting the French captain to release the sidekick and signing letter that allow all of them safe passage, and the piano playing a happy song and the sidekick doing a little dance while leaving!
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Post by Fading Fast on May 24, 2024 9:16:02 GMT
One Is a Lonely Number from 1972 with Trish Van Devere, Melvin Douglas, Scott Beach and Janet Leigh
One Is a Lonely Number is a time capsule of the social, cultural and legal shifts that were in play when it was made in 1972. Yet it also has something to say about relationships and marriage that never becomes dated.
The changes coming out of the 1960s "cultural revolution" included the breakdown of "traditional" values and morals. Attached at the hip was the feminist movement and a general focus on "doing your own thing" and not just conforming to society's expectations.
Along with that came legal changes to divorce – no fault being a big one – and an entire shift in how society viewed premarital sex, infidelity and marriage itself.
Trish Van Devere plays a twenty-seven-year-old traditional wife whose older English professor husband has just left her and filed for divorce. Van Devere is stunned, hurt and lost. She starts out with a pre-1960s way of thinking and ends with a very modern view.
A big part of the movie is Van Devere hoping her husband will return to her as friends, a women's divorce support group and a kindly, elderly neighborhood grocer, played by Melvin Douglas, advise her to accept reality and move on.
For fans of early Hollywood, it's fun to see Douglas in a critical role as a gentle, caring father figure to Van Devere who also learns something from her. With his sincere and moving performance here, it's easy to see why he had a long career in Hollywood.
There is, though, a general sadness to Van Devere as she seems genuinely shocked and hurt that her husband has left her. She gets a job as a lifeguard at a drab city pool, is hit on by some losers, nearly gets raped and gets played hard by a married man.
It's a "welcome to the cold, cruel world" odyssey that has fine-boned, Bambi-looking Van Devere wobbling often, but never going down for the count. Eventually, Van Devere sadly accepts that her marriage is over and hires a lawyer to fight for her rights in the divorce.
While the law here is all dated, Van Devere's representative, played by Scott Beach, is a wonderful Southern lawyer type of character (why he's in San Francisco isn't addressed) who wields the law like a club. He's not likable, but you're glad he's in Van Devere's corner.
There's a small girl-power twist at the end that is more inspirational than practical, but it fits in with the zeitgeist of the time. Yet despite its heavy 1970s vibe, Van Devere's performance is thoughtful and moving even today.
Janet Leigh, in a supporting role, is a hoot as the head of the women's support group. She seems to be having a blast playing a brassy 1970s feminist, so much so, you expect the "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" line to pop out of her mouth.
The on-location shooting in San Francisco – the center of the 1960s counterculture movement – wonderfully adds to the time-capsule value of the movie. Like New York City, there's an energy to its streets that translates well to the screen.
One Is a Lonely Number is just a low-budget look at divorce in the wake of significant social change. It's not a major movie, but it is reasonably entertaining and well acted. Plus, it avers that one thing never changes: being left by a spouse one still loves hurts.
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Post by Fading Fast on May 26, 2024 10:11:12 GMT
The Best of Everything from 1959 with Hope Lange, Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Suzy Parker, Brian Aherne, Louis Jourdan and Stephen Boyd
"Would you ever marry a girl who wasn't (a worried and embarrassed pause ensues) pure."
– Diane Baker playing the pretty and young April Morrison contemplating "going all the way" with her boyfriend.
It was a different time when The Best of Everything was made. Today, it's easy and right to see it as an advertisement for the women's liberation movement, whose big push was less than a decade away, as many of the men here are sexually harassing pigs.
The cultural mindset was also different as many young women simply saw getting married as their goal in life with work just something they did until they "met the right man."
The good news is women can choose their own path now and then struggle like everyone else to make it work. Liberation rightly opened up new opportunities and changed the cultural framework, but life, as ever, is still hard.
If you can only see the bad in The Best of Everything, it probably isn't the movie for you. Yet as a piece of culture, it’s iconic. The creators of the early 2000s TV show set in the 1960s, Mad Men, used it as reference material.
The 1950s was also the high point of these types of glossy soap opera movies where the young women wanted to get married, but the men of any age only wanted sex without commitment. However, the really good men wanted marriage too.
Stripped of its particulars and Technicolor prettiness, that was basically the plot of many mid-century melodramas. See Written on the Wind and Three Coins in the Fountain as just a couple of examples.
It's no different here as three young women - played by Hope Lange, Diane Baker and Suzy Parker - all secretaries at "Fabian Publishing," try to navigate their way to marriage and happiness.
Parker, a real-life model-turned-actress, plays a secretary trying to turn theater star. Yet after she has an affair with a director, played with smarmy charm by Louis Jourdan, marriage seems more important to her than a career on stage.
Baker, the most innocent of the three, gets played hard by a trust-fund kid who, when he learns she's pregnant, promises her an elopement only as a ruse to get her to an abortion clinic. It's as brutal a move as it sounds.
Lange, the closest thing this ensemble movie has to a star, is working mainly to mark time until her "perfect" boyfriend returns, after his year abroad studying, to marry her.
Foreshadowing, though, the coming women's movement, Radcliffe-educated Lange can't help eying a career in publishing, especially when she meets a successful female publisher, played by Joan Crawford.
Lange then takes a massive body blow when her "perfect boyfriend" calls to tell her he just married another girl – a rich young woman with a father who sets him up in business. An embittered but wiser Lange now throws herself into her career.
Toss in a few more characters and it's an impressive and crowded cast, including Brian Aherne playing a senior editor who is an aging, married and boozy office sexual predator and Stephen Boyd playing a not-married, boozy and cynical editor.
The Best of Everything doesn't take the easy route by having everything work out for everyone. Some lives get permanently smashed up and some veer off course for a while until getting, what they hope will be, their happily ever after.
Lange, though, as an early echo of the future, faces the very modern problem of "can one really have it all?" Today, we frame it as a work-balance issue, but it's not new. It's no different than when single Lange, now a successful editor, realizes she's missing something.
Part of the movie's fun today is seeing the blend of veteran actors, including Crawford playing a strong, realistic older woman and editor and up-and-coming stars like Lange, who tries hard but can't yet hold her own in scenes with Crawford.
Another part of the fun, the part the creators of Mad Men understood, is the movie's time travel. Set in New York City, the clothes, cars, hairstyles and apartments are all era archetypical.
The office summer picnic, busing the employees out for a boozy day at a country club, and "Fabians" offices, set in the mid-century-modern architectural icon, the Seagrams building, are 1950s time capsule worthy.
The movie is based on the Rona Jaffe bestseller of the same name that, as is usually the case, is better than the movie -- here because the movie drags a bit in its two-hour runtime and doesn't fully capture the heart of the novel.
Still, for a trip guided by an impressive cast to mid-century New York City and its many landmarks, memes and cultural norms, The Best of Everything is a darn fun romp. It's a window into the 1950s wonderfully free of modern biases.
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Post by NoShear on May 26, 2024 14:29:33 GMT
The Best of Everything from 1959 with Hope Lange, Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Suzy Parker, Brian Aherne, Louis Jourdan and Stephen Boyd
"Would you ever marry a girl who wasn't (a worried and embarrassed pause ensues) pure."
– Diane Baker playing the pretty and young April Morrison contemplating "going all the way" with her boyfriend.
It was a different time when The Best of Everything was made. Today, it's easy and right to see it as an advertisement for the women's liberation movement, whose big push was less than a decade away, as many of the men here are sexually harassing pigs.
The cultural mindset was also different as many young women simply saw getting married as their goal in life with work just something they did until they "met the right man."
The good news is women can choose their own path now and then struggle like everyone else to make it work. Liberation rightly opened up new opportunities and changed the cultural framework, but life, as ever, is still hard.
If you can only see the bad in The Best of Everything, it probably isn't the movie for you. Yet as a piece of culture, it’s iconic. The creators of the early 2000s TV show set in the 1960s, Mad Men, used it as reference material.
The 1950s was also the high point of these types of glossy soap opera movies where the young women wanted to get married, but the men of any age only wanted sex without commitment. However, the really good men wanted marriage too.
Stripped of its particulars and Technicolor prettiness, that was basically the plot of many mid-century melodramas. See Written on the Wind and Three Coins in the Fountain as just a couple of examples.
It's no different here as three young women - played by Hope Lange, Diane Baker and Suzy Parker - all secretaries at "Fabian Publishing," try to navigate their way to marriage and happiness.
Parker, a real-life model-turned-actress, plays a secretary trying to turn theater star. Yet after she has an affair with a director, played with smarmy charm by Louis Jourdan, marriage seems more important to her than a career on stage.
Baker, the most innocent of the three, gets played hard by a trust-fund kid who, when he learns she's pregnant, promises her an elopement only as a ruse to get her to an abortion clinic. It's as brutal a move as it sounds.
Lange, the closest thing this ensemble movie has to a star, is working mainly to mark time until her "perfect" boyfriend returns, after his year abroad studying, to marry her.
Foreshadowing, though, the coming women's movement, Radcliffe-educated Lange can't help eying a career in publishing, especially when she meets a successful female publisher, played by Joan Crawford.
Lange then takes a massive body blow when her "perfect boyfriend" calls to tell her he just married another girl – a rich young woman with a father who sets him up in business. An embittered but wiser Lange now throws herself into her career.
Toss in a few more characters and it's an impressive and crowded cast, including Brian Aherne playing a senior editor who is an aging, married and boozy office sexual predator and Stephen Boyd playing a not-married, boozy and cynical editor.
The Best of Everything doesn't take the easy route by having everything work out for everyone. Some lives get permanently smashed up and some veer off course for a while until getting, what they hope will be, their happily ever after.
Lange, though, as an early echo of the future, faces the very modern problem of "can one really have it all?" Today, we frame it as a work-balance issue, but it's not new. It's no different than when single Lange, now a successful editor, realizes she's missing something.
Part of the movie's fun today is seeing the blend of veteran actors, including Crawford playing a strong, realistic older woman and editor and up-and-coming stars like Lange, who tries hard but can't yet hold her own in scenes with Crawford.
Another part of the fun, the part the creators of Mad Men understood, is the movie's time travel. Set in New York City, the clothes, cars, hairstyles and apartments are all era archetypical.
The office summer picnic, busing the employees out for a boozy day at a country club, and "Fabians" offices, set in the mid-century-modern architectural icon, the Seagrams building, are 1950s time capsule worthy.
The movie is based on the Rona Jaffe bestseller of the same name that, as is usually the case, is better than the movie -- here because the movie drags a bit in its two-hour runtime and doesn't fully capture the heart of the novel.
Still, for a trip guided by an impressive cast to mid-century New York City and its many landmarks, memes and cultural norms, The Best of Everything is a darn fun romp. It's a window into the 1950s wonderfully free of modern biases.
Fading Fast, your review is what regulars have already come to expect - socio offerings and decor descriptions which give the reader many interesting floors to visit, but perhaps I don't know you as well as I might have previously thought: I was surprised there wasn't more enthusiasm for Suzy Parker!?
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Post by Fading Fast on May 26, 2024 16:25:11 GMT
The Best of Everything from 1959 with Hope Lange, Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Suzy Parker, Brian Aherne, Louis Jourdan and Stephen Boyd
"Would you ever marry a girl who wasn't (a worried and embarrassed pause ensues) pure."
– Diane Baker playing the pretty and young April Morrison contemplating "going all the way" with her boyfriend.
It was a different time when The Best of Everything was made. Today, it's easy and right to see it as an advertisement for the women's liberation movement, whose big push was less than a decade away, as many of the men here are sexually harassing pigs.
The cultural mindset was also different as many young women simply saw getting married as their goal in life with work just something they did until they "met the right man."
The good news is women can choose their own path now and then struggle like everyone else to make it work. Liberation rightly opened up new opportunities and changed the cultural framework, but life, as ever, is still hard.
If you can only see the bad in The Best of Everything, it probably isn't the movie for you. Yet as a piece of culture, it’s iconic. The creators of the early 2000s TV show set in the 1960s, Mad Men, used it as reference material.
The 1950s was also the high point of these types of glossy soap opera movies where the young women wanted to get married, but the men of any age only wanted sex without commitment. However, the really good men wanted marriage too.
Stripped of its particulars and Technicolor prettiness, that was basically the plot of many mid-century melodramas. See Written on the Wind and Three Coins in the Fountain as just a couple of examples.
It's no different here as three young women - played by Hope Lange, Diane Baker and Suzy Parker - all secretaries at "Fabian Publishing," try to navigate their way to marriage and happiness.
Parker, a real-life model-turned-actress, plays a secretary trying to turn theater star. Yet after she has an affair with a director, played with smarmy charm by Louis Jourdan, marriage seems more important to her than a career on stage.
Baker, the most innocent of the three, gets played hard by a trust-fund kid who, when he learns she's pregnant, promises her an elopement only as a ruse to get her to an abortion clinic. It's as brutal a move as it sounds.
Lange, the closest thing this ensemble movie has to a star, is working mainly to mark time until her "perfect" boyfriend returns, after his year abroad studying, to marry her.
Foreshadowing, though, the coming women's movement, Radcliffe-educated Lange can't help eying a career in publishing, especially when she meets a successful female publisher, played by Joan Crawford.
Lange then takes a massive body blow when her "perfect boyfriend" calls to tell her he just married another girl – a rich young woman with a father who sets him up in business. An embittered but wiser Lange now throws herself into her career.
Toss in a few more characters and it's an impressive and crowded cast, including Brian Aherne playing a senior editor who is an aging, married and boozy office sexual predator and Stephen Boyd playing a not-married, boozy and cynical editor.
The Best of Everything doesn't take the easy route by having everything work out for everyone. Some lives get permanently smashed up and some veer off course for a while until getting, what they hope will be, their happily ever after.
Lange, though, as an early echo of the future, faces the very modern problem of "can one really have it all?" Today, we frame it as a work-balance issue, but it's not new. It's no different than when single Lange, now a successful editor, realizes she's missing something.
Part of the movie's fun today is seeing the blend of veteran actors, including Crawford playing a strong, realistic older woman and editor and up-and-coming stars like Lange, who tries hard but can't yet hold her own in scenes with Crawford.
Another part of the fun, the part the creators of Mad Men understood, is the movie's time travel. Set in New York City, the clothes, cars, hairstyles and apartments are all era archetypical.
The office summer picnic, busing the employees out for a boozy day at a country club, and "Fabians" offices, set in the mid-century-modern architectural icon, the Seagrams building, are 1950s time capsule worthy.
The movie is based on the Rona Jaffe bestseller of the same name that, as is usually the case, is better than the movie -- here because the movie drags a bit in its two-hour runtime and doesn't fully capture the heart of the novel.
Still, for a trip guided by an impressive cast to mid-century New York City and its many landmarks, memes and cultural norms, The Best of Everything is a darn fun romp. It's a window into the 1950s wonderfully free of modern biases.
Fading Fast, your review is what regulars have already come to expect - socio offerings and decor descriptions which give the reader many interesting floors to visit, but perhaps I don't know you as well as I might have previously thought: I was surprised there wasn't more enthusiasm for Suzy Parker!? It's funny that you say that as I deleted a paragraph on her because I try to keep these review to three-minutes reading time or less (according to the word-count software I drop the review in when I'm done) and since I was just over my limit, I deleted a few paragraphs and hers was one that went. I could have easily written another 500 words on this movie not because it's a great movie, but because it is so '50s iconic and because it has a large and interesting cast. Parker is a stunning woman - all 5'10" of her - but man was her character a sad one here. As a fun aside, for about five years, I worked three blocks from where Hope Lange is standing in the bottom picture.
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Post by topbilled on May 31, 2024 2:43:00 GMT
I watched LITTLE MISS BROADWAY (1938) today. I had never seen it before. Of course it's a "kid's movie," but the adults are written and performed very well. It was fun to see Edna May Oliver as the villainess of the piece. It occurs to me that people fawn over Shirley Temple and associate her with being a cute adorable little waif in these movies of hers from the 1930s...but she was actually a very sharp comedienne. The stuff they give her to do, and the way she does it, is quite hilarious. I really enjoyed this movie!
I will be posting my review in the Neglected Films section in a few days.
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